Month: September 2011

Hyderabad, September 26: The management of State Road Transport Corporation have once again failed to convince its employees from the Telangana region to withdraw the strike as the latter remained firm that they would not attend to duties until the Centre announces a decision on separate Telangana State.

RTC managing director Prasad Rao on Sunday held a meeting appealing to striking employees—drivers and conductors to resume their duties as the general strike was causing lot of inconvenience to commuters apart from bringing huge losses to the debt-ridden Corporation.

Hyderabad, September 26: Director General of Police V Dinesh Reddy on Sunday stated that the police would not interfere with the Telangana agitation, if it goes on peacefully.

Hyderabad, September 26: Describing 48 hours Rail Roko observed in Telangana region a big success, Telangana Political Joint Action Committee Chairman Prof M Kodandaram on Sunday stated that the agitation has mounted pressure on the Centre for announcing its decision on Telangana state.

Visakhapatnam, September 26: Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Daggupati Purandeswari on Sunday stated that she would contest from next parliamentary elections from Visakhapatnam.

Talking to media persons while participating in a programme, Purandeswari expressed confidence that the people of Visakhapatnam constituency would repose their faith seeing her performance in the district.

Hyderabad, September 26: Barring a few incidents of violence, the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) on Sunday conducted the Group I Mains examination peacefully across the state on Sunday under tight security.

Despite the objections raised by the pro-Telangana groups and total shutdown due to on-going general strike, the examination went off peacefully at centres in both Hyderabad and Warangal districts. However, some advocates tried to stall the examination at the LB Centre in Hyderabad which was foiled by the police.

Hyderabad, September 26: The two-day ‘Rail Roko’ agitation will come to a close at 6 pm on Sunday. Telangana Political Joint Action Committee Prof M Kodandaram told reporters on Sunday that the ‘Rail Roko’ would not be extended.

Following JAC’s announcement, the South Central Railway has decided to restore the train services from Sunday night. Following trains will be run as per normal schedule from Sunday:

Jeddah, September 26: Saudi Arabia’s king announced on Sunday women would be given the right to vote and stand in elections, a bold shift in the ultra-conservative absolute monarchy as pressure for social and democratic reform sweeps the Middle East.

It was by far the biggest change in Saudi Arabia’s tightly-controlled society yet ordered by the 88-year-old Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who took power six years ago with a reformer’s reputation but has ruled as a cautious conservative.

California, September 25: THE beating rhythm of human heart cells can be controlled using light. Researchers at Stanford University in California inserted a gene found in algae into human embryonic stem cells, then made the cells differentiate into heart muscle cells. The gene produces a light-sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin-2, which allows the cells to be switched on or off using pulses of light (Biophysical Journal, DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2011.08.004)

Washington, September 25: EVEN a cancer gene may have a good side. A study of people with African ancestry has revealed that a gene associated with cancer shows a pattern of variability that suggests it benefits carriers.

Alkes Price at the Harvard School of Public Health and Gaurav Bhatia at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the genomes of more than 12,000 African-Americans, Nigerians and Gambians. They were broadly similar, but sections of DNA within four genes were remarkably variable between populations.

New Delhi,September 26: A senior Congress leader from Telangana on Sunday joined the BJP in attacking Home Minister P Chidambaram for not delivering on the statehood promise and asked him to get his “facts right” on the party’s stand on the contentious issue.

Congress leader K Keshav Rao and BJP Chief Spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad asked the UPA government not to play with the sentiments of the people of the region.

Bundoora, September 25: IF MODERN medicine cannot provide an answer to multidrug-resistant microbes, perhaps ancient animals can. Biologists have resurrected a mammalian antimicrobial compound that was last seen on Earth 59 million years ago when mammals were recovering from the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. Even now it is potent enough to destroy some of our most troublesome pathogens.

Canada, Sepember 25: IN AUGUST 2010, a bowhead whale from the Bering Sea swam into the North-West Passage. Having negotiated Alaska and picked its way through the maze of ice-ridden channels off the north coast of Canada, it made its way to Viscount Melville sound. There it met a second bowhead, which had entered the passage from Baffin bay, next to Greenland.

Washington, September 25: HEY! T-cells! Leave them bugs alone! Some immune cells need an education to avoid attacking gut bacteria that help digest food – and their classroom is your colon.

Chennai, September 25: The Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) is planning to tap Indian corporates for funds to complete some of its infrastructural projects following increased intake of students over the last three years.

“The student intake has gone up. This year the total intake is around 450 students. Earlier, the intake was around 260 students,” said IIM-C director Shekhar Chaudhuri.

New Delhi, September 25: In a bid to create a positive impact on thousands of teachers and at least 10 million children, the UNESCO will hold training programmes for 10,000 school principals in India, Kenya and Ghana.

The ‘10,000 Principals Leadership Programme’ is organised by UNESCO and the Varkey GEMS Foundation, an NGO.

“The school principals in many developing countries receive little leadership and development training,” UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement.

New Delhi, September 25: Students from 10 schools in and around the national capital got together at the Jantar Mantar on Friday to observe the autumn equinox, the NGO which organized the event said.

An equinox occurs twice a year when the day and night have approximately equal length.

“Around 200 students from various city schools participated in the event,” an official of the NGO, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), said.

Melbourne, September 25: Worried by continuing slide in the international students’ numbers, the Australian government has decided to relax visa norms further.

The decision has coincided with former New South Wales minister Michael Knight’s report that calls for loosening the onerous immigration requirements for international students.

New Delhi, September 25: The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) on Friday invited applications for three online programmes — on nutrition, the Himalayan ecosystem and management of the Ganges river, a statement said.

The last date for submitting applications is Oct 15.

The ‘Appreciation Programme on Sustainable Management of Ganga’ aims to create awareness about the Ganga and its connection with Indian civilization and culture.

Mumbai, September 25: This sounds crazy, but given that it’s Lindsay Lohan? Who knows. The often-clothed train wreck reportedly crashed a party and got all up in the grill of her rumored boyfriend Vikram Chatwal’s estranged wife, Priya!

Lohan has been spotted kissing Dream hotel owner Vikram at his home in New York. She was said to be unimpressed when Priya Sachdev arrived from India with their daughter. How did she respond to Priya’s return?

New Delhi, September 25: Police may say they are doing whatever they can to ensure safety of women in the capital but a study on rape cases claims that the fairer sex is not safe here even during daytime.

The study, conducted by the Centre for Social Research (CSR), is based on 58 FIRs lodged by rape victims in Delhi between January 2009 and July 2011 and medical legal reports of doctors.

According to the study, as many as seven rapes took place between 6 am to noon, 17 cases between noon and 6 pm and 14 victims were raped between 6 pm and midnight.

New Delhi, September 25: From the most romantic of unions to a ruthless murder, over the years their life took a trajectory that neither Virender nor Aarti foresaw on their fateful meeting in a railway compartment 18 years ago. Relations between the Moti Nagar businessman and his wife of 14 years had been strained for some time, but when the police announced on Saturday that Aarti had planned and financed Virender’s brutal murder – he was stabbed 36 times with an ice pick in the early hours of Wednesday – the news jarred with the details of their early life.

Hyderabad, September 25: “The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can,” goes the famous lines by singer and songwriter Robert Cushing. Taking forward this philosophy, the Hyderabad Management Association gave out its 39th Annual Awards to successful entrepreneurs from the state at at the FAPCII Federation House on Saturday.

Jammu, September 25: The army has registered, trained and guided more than 5,000 people in the Jammu region in the past year to get employment under Operation Sadbhavana , an officer said.

More than a 100 have gone on to get jobs and many others have gone for self-employment.

Brigadier J.S. Cheema of 16 Corps told IANS, “We keep adding new features to Operation Sadbhavna and this Youth Employment and Guidance Node is an innovation that has helped large number of youth in remote and terrorist infested areas of the region.”

Hyderabad, September 25: An intermediate student was knocked down by a fourwheeler in the Osmania University campus on Saturday. Rabeeb Atifa (19) was a resident of Sitaphalmandi and an intermediate student. Around 12.30 p.m, she was proceeding towards the Arts College from AMS Kaman when a Tata Winger coming from behind hit her vehicle.

Atifa fell down on the ground and suffered severe head injuries. She died while being shifted to the nearby Durgabhai Deshmukh Hospital.

Hyderabad, September 25: The state government is taking all steps for successful implementation of the muchpublicised `1perkg rice scheme announced by chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy recently. As part of it, the finance department has decided to allocate the about Rs 200 crore for the scheme to be implemented from November 1 for the next five months.

The chief minister would formally launch the Rs 1akg rice scheme on AP Formation Day. Kiran Kumar Reddy is contemplating more schemes to woo the weaker sections.